In chemistry class, the girl to boy ratio is $4$ to $2$. If there are $12$ girls, how many boys are there?
A ratio of $4$ girls to $2$ boys means that there is a group of $4$ girls for every group of $2$ boys. If there are $12$ girls, then there are $3$ groups of $4$ girls each. Because we know the ratio is $4:2$ , there must be $3$ groups of $2$ boys each. There is a total of $6$ boys in chemistry class.